How to cultivate a grateful heart

Life has it's ups and downs. When you stop searching for the perfect life and the perfect emotion you want to have it becomes simpler. I've spent way to many hours of my life being ungrateful for what is right in front of me. When you don't have a grateful heart, everything seems worse than it is. Once you understand how dang blessed you are, and realize that all of those things you wanted are not of such importance, you will feel this pleasant peace take over your heart and mind. A question you might ask is "How can I switch my mindset to be grateful and not always long for the next best thing?" First things first, no matter how hard you are trying to be grateful for everything, you will still have days where you are yearning for new things. A new job, new clothes, new friends etcetera. The thing is we are human and being human means we make mistakes. Learning to not beat ourselves up for those mistakes can be hard. But the more you make mistakes, the more opportunities you have to learn and grow. Instead of feeling embarrassed, take responsibility for them, decipher the lesson they can teach you and move on. Now that we've cleared that up, let's move on to the first tip.

My bros having a tickle fight.

1. Gratitude Journaling

This is something I started doing in 2019, and it changed my life for the better. This is also the year I started journaling regularly. Having an outlet to relieve my anxieties, talk myself through my problems as well as intentionally finding things to be grateful for and writing them down day after day changed who I was as a person. That year I had been struggling with depression and major social anxiety, journaling didn't fix everything at once but it had this slow affect on the way I viewed my life. In the years that followed, I matured in so many ways. If you can build the habit of journaling in the morning, you can watch your life transform as well. Pointing out the good in your life day after day helps you to start thinking positively and when you are thinking positively, everything changes.

2. Create An Uplifting Morning Routine

The way you start your day plays a huge role in how your day goes. I used to role out of bed at the last second, throw on some clothes and fly off to start my day. When I started my day like that I was left feeling stressed, anxious and like a mess of a person. One day I started adding journaling to my routine, then time devoted to reading my bible, then yoga and eventually I had a well rounded routine. Now I can't imagine how I could go a day without going through my routine. It grounds me, makes me feel grateful, productive and better about myself and it also motivates me to keep that productivity going throughout the rest of my day. Night routines are important as well, but I've found that my morning routine has the most positive impact on my life.

3. Read True Stories

This one might seem dumb but when you hear about other peoples misfortunes, it puts your problems into perspective and you'll soon realize that what you were so stressed about a moment ago really doesn't hold much weight over your life. Whether it's an actual full length book or simply an article or blog post online. I would encourage you to regularly feed your brain stories like that. Your mind needs to be reminded regularly not just once. If you want to implement this tip into your life but don't have a lot of time for reading, I'd recommend "A Long Walk To Water" by Linda Sue Park. I read this a month ago and not only did it make me cry but It also helped put into perspective what I had at the time thought of as this huge chaotic problem. There are loads of other really good ones though, and all you have to do is search on google.

Well, those are all the tips I have for you today. I hope that you will implement some of them into your life and that they will help you cultivate a grateful heart. Have a fabulous week and don't forget to thank God for all that you have!

-Lydia Beth